THE JAPAN THAT CAN SAY NO
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
This is ... a translation of a best-selling Japanese book called "The
Japan That Can Say No." If you read no further in this introductory
note, please at least read this: the group that has typed in and
posted this translation wishes to secure for it the widest possible
distribution. Please ... mail [this document] either in print or
electronically, to colleagues, newspaper editors, members of the
national and local government, academics, radio talk-show hosts,
friends, and family; hand them out at work; leave piles of them by
the coffee machine. Note that the book is rather short, and so can
be conveniently Xerox-copied.
This book has been a best-seller in Japan, and has been the subject
of some attention in the United States; members of Congress have read
it, and some spoke of reading it into the Congressional Record, but
none of them ever did that. It has been excerpted in newspaper
articles and Usenet postings, but these excerpts are always the same,
because nearly no one has available the full text of a translation.
This has not been an oversight on the part of the authors, Akio
Morita and Shintaro Ishihara. Akio Morita is the chairman of Sony,
the very large electronics conglomerate that has recently purchased
Columbia Pictures. Shintaro Ishihara has been described in some news
accounts as a right-wing extremist, and Morita's association with him
has been described as a foolish mistake. These accounts are very
misleading; so nearly as I can tell, Mr. Ishihara is no more an
extremist in his country than, say, Bob Dole is in ours. He is a
somewhat right-of-center, charismatic and powerful member of the
ruling Liberal Democratic Party who placed third in the race to
succeed Prime Minister Sosuke Uno this past August. Ishihara has
served as the Minister of Transport, and is currently a member of the
Diet, Japan's legislative body.
The writers of American news accounts that call Mr. Morita's
co-authorship of the book with Mr. Ishihara a foolish mistake are
making a basic error of a sort that has complicated our understanding
of the relationship between the United States and Japan: they are
imagining that the reception the book would be given in the United
States should have played a major factor in Morita's decision. But
this book was not written to be read in the United States (and, so
far, it has not been); it was written to be read by a Japanese public
that questions the nature of the post-war political relationship
between the United States and Japan. It is a political instrument
that has helped to define for the public the positions of its authors
in much the same way that a popular book of political essays might do
so for an up-and-coming politician in the United States, and more so,
because the Japanese read such books more avidly than does the
American public.
The book's publisher, Kobunsha Publishing Ltd., has said that it has
no plans to publish the book in English and has authorized no
translations. Ishihara and Morita have spoken of how the United
States government has violated their copyright in distributing
translations of the book to members of Congress, and Morita has gone
on record as saying that he does not want to publish the book in the
United States, as this might inflame relations between the two
countries.
According to rumor, the translations available in Washington have
been written by either DARPA or the CIA. We have no idea if this is
true, or which translation this might be; however, it is one of those
circulated in Washington. It was apparently done in haste (and
perhaps by non-native speakers of English), as it contains numerous
typographical errors, errors of grammar, and errors of diction, which
we have made no attempt to rectify.
This translation has been entered and electronically distributed by a
group that wishes to remain anonymous. This is because we have no
wish to be bear-hugged in court by a powerful Japanese politician and
the CEO of an immense Japanese conglomerate, all under the approving
eye of the U.S. Department of State. However, we should like to
explain why we wished to embark on a project whose success could only
worsen the trade relationship, and even the political relationship
between the United States and Japan.
We Americans live in a country controlled by a variety of interests.
Over the past ten years we have repeatedly put into government a
group of people who cannot even make up their minds as to whether
public education should be funded; who are against the creation of a
national industrial policy; and who do not believe that the
government should take any steps to ensure that manufacturing jobs
should continue to exist in the United States.
Like many Americans, those of us who have undertaken to distribute
this book are able to make up our minds about all of these issues.
We believe that public education should be one of the first national
priorities and that the United States should have national industrial
and trade policies to ensure the continued existence of domestic
manufacturing. Our feelings about this are based on a simple desire
to see the United States maintain a decent standard of living for its
citizens. People who flip burgers are able to realize fewer of their
dreams than are skilled laborers who build things, not least because
people who flip burgers create less value for the economy and so make
less money.
How does "The Japan That Can Say No" figure in this? Our country is
obsessed with feeling good, to the exclusion of good sense. The
popular conception of our time runs something like this:
"Everything's great, just like the president says. Those crazy folks
on Wall Street go up and down, but they do okay, and if some more
factories close, if a few shiftless characters can't afford housing,
what the hell, huh? And those clever Japanese, what will they think
of next? They're always thinking of neat new toys to make for us."
The reality is much more grim. It seems very possible that in ten or
twenty years there will be no sector in which American-made products
are internationally competitive. Many American industrial concerns
no longer establish domestic manufacturing plants because they are
unable to find laborers sufficiently skilled to operate them
efficiently. We educate fewer and fewer engineers each year. Much
of American commerce is controlled by a managerial class that has
been trained mostly in marketing, has trouble with simple technical
concepts, and prefers the ease of marketing foreign products to the
complexities of managing manufacturing and development. Meanwhile,
many American citizens are unable to make ends meet, and their number
is clearly increasing.
All of these points are made regularly by domestic policy analysts,
to absolutely no significant effect. We were struck by the fact that
they are also made repeatedly in "The Japan That Can Say No,"
although here they are often couched in racist and belligerent
language. Ishihara and Morita wrote their book for domestic
consumption, to promote themselves and particular Japanese national
policies. We wish to use the book for an analogous purpose: we hope
that reading "The Japan That Can Say No" will help to jolt Americans
out of their complacency.
We believe that the urgency of our country's situation justifies our
disregard for the wishes of the book's authors. Their interest in
analyzing the United States' problems seems to be motivated at best
by a penchant for self-congratulation and at worst by one for
jingoistic sentiment and self-promotion. The fact that they are
attempting to ensure that their audience remains exclusively Japanese
reinforces our sense that they do not see our country's interests as
theirs. Still, much of what they say is accurate, and we believe
that reading it may help our country to act in its own interests.
Consider the analogy of a family who make their living by farming,
and who are in domestic trouble. The head of the family (say the
father) is a compulsive gambler, and, although some family members do
their best to wake him up to the fact that he is destroying the
family's livelihood, he pays no attention, selling off the tractor,
the truck, the cows, mortgaging the house and the fields. He points
out to his family that his good friends in town who run the bank, the
general store, and the casino are still happy to do business with
him. The bank still gives him mortgages, the general store still
buys what's left of the farming equipment, and the casino always lets
him in to play.
Perhaps if the farmer knew he was the laugh of the town, he'd pay
some attention. If he heard his friends clucking their tongues and
saying that it was an awful shame, what he was doing to his family
and that they didn't think he'd ever again get back on his feet, even
as they eagerly bought his tractor and his fields and continued
taking his money at the casino, he might think twice. Maybe he'd
even realize how far he'd fallen, and set about the difficult work of
putting his farm back in order.
If this makes sense to you, please work to disseminate copies of this
book as much as possible, especially to people outside of the Usenet
community -- those of us with access to networks are, after all, a
small minority of the national community. Please feel free to
disseminate as well this introductory note.